Late at night, my mind starts to wander and stumble over odd ideas. Tonight, for instance, I was thinking about some clips I’d seen from Doctor Who and thinking, “It must be a terrible thing to be a Dalek. They hate the whole universe, and the whole universe hates them. I don’t think they even like each other. I wonder if even a Dalek’s mother loves it?”
And then I thought, “Hang on, how do Daleks even reproduce? You never see little Daleks running (or rolling) around. You never see Dalek creches.” I do have a vague memory of Davros, during Eccleston’s tenure, saying something about gene-splicing human DNA into Dalek DNA (although I forget why), so I’m going to guess there’s some sort of lab work involved, but still.
I’m almost certain it’s cloning. The [url-Evolution of the Daleks (TV story) | Tardis | Fandom]Evolution of the Daleks episode is probably the one you’re thinking about with splicing humans and Daleks. Granted that was Tennant and not Eccelston. No Davros was involved either, you’re probably thinking of human-form Dalek Sec.
You’re probably thinking of “Parting of the Ways”, in which the Dalek Emperor (not Davros) was culling human genetic material to re-create the Dalek race after the Time War.
Incidentally, we have seen a Dalek crèche before, in the Tom Baker story “Genesis of the Daleks”, where Davros was introduced. Davros created the initial Daleks by experimenting on the Kaled people (your typical human aliens that were all the rage in low-budget sci-fi of the '60s and ‘70s) to create a lifeform that would be able to live on Skaro’s surface after the centuries-long nuclear war, and it’s implied that some combination of cloning and genetic engineering is involved. The Doctor finds the chamber where Davros’ creations are being “hatched” and opts not to destroy it.
In Genesis of the Daleks, a Fourth Doctor episode, there is an “incubator room” full of baby Daleks which becomes important to the plot. One gets the impression that Dalek reproduction involves various bits of machinery. It’s never outright stated, but I always had the impression in vitro fertilization and artificial incubation are involved.
The Daleks are not a naturally evolved race. Davros did quite a bit of tinkering back in the day. “Natural” reproduction isn’t required for them to exist.
The 2nd Doctor story Power Of The Daleks showed how two Daleks set up a Dalek factory and made an army of Daleks in days. They are cloned and grown to maturity in tanks before the adult is put into the machine.
It’s probably cloning; but I came up with a fanwank that I wish was canon:
When a Dalek has finally accumulated a fatal lifetime dose of radiation, it develops cancer; but the tumors are actually Dalek embryos. As they grow and develop, the host Dalek slowly dies in agony, usually going insane and having to be immobilized. Once the host is finally dead, the spawn are transferred to travel machines to finish their growth and education. Dalek propagation is therefore a tradeoff- how many Daleks can be sacrificed at a time in order for the race to multiply.
